Well-attended reception

The kind of traffic queues that accompany an international EDM concert were witnessed outside the NSCI's dome last Friday at the wedding reception of Kresha and Vanraj, progeny of Kishore and Kintu Bajaj, and Manju and Hemant Zaveri.

The Bajajs are a popular social couple with links to various fields: business, restaurants, films, and we spotted Salman Khan, Neetu and Rishi Kapoor, and Sanjay and Maanyata Dutt, restaurateurs like Sunil (Joy) Kapur, Sudhir Bahl and AD Singh, actors Naseeruddin and Ratna Pathak with sons Imaad and Vivan representing the Bada sahib Baldev Pathak legacy of yore, and a very glamorous Tina Ambani accompanied by handsome son Anmol, close friends of the Bajajs who stayed till the very end.

Vanraj Zaveri and Kresha Bajaj

Salman Khan

Next week another prominent SoBo betrothal kicks off at the same place!

Sunil (Joy) Kapur

Rishi and Neetu Kapoor

Priya’s paradigm shiftNice to meet former MP Priya Dutt recently. Clad in a denim shirt, and denim blue jeans encasing her never ending legs, the Congresswoman, we felt, looked markedly better than she’d looked in a long time. "We politicians do not to realise the price we pay for our lifestyles," she said. "When I lost the election it sounded awful, but in many ways it was the best thing that happened to me — I caught up with my family, my health," said Nargis and Sunil Dutt’s youngest child who appears to have inherited their legacy of public service.

Priya Dutt

"And the best part is that I’ve adopted a tribal village in Maharashtra where I’m involved hands on, on a day-to-day basis in the lives of its people."

Could it be the absence of realpolitik or the presence of her dear brother finally home — that was responsible for her glow? The jury’s out on that one.

Hailing from a somewhat stereotypical background (father — a doctor, mother an IT technologist), this daughter of a first gen NRI couple went on to embrace the American dream, but admits that she always felt she didn’t fit in.

Then she did the one atypical thing: she entered a beauty pageant and opted to perform a Bollywood dance for her talent round.

"I chose the Dhoom Taana number from Om Shanti Om," said Davuluri. "Like any shy Indian girl from Jabalpur or Jharkhand would. What’s more I hadn’t informed my parents that I was entering the pageant," she admitted shyly.

No two ways about it — girls will be girls.

Joyful Delhi weddingAs families go it is one of the Capital’s pre-eminent ones which is why the wedding of the New York-based ‘Chippy,’ Ishaan Ahluwalia, son of Vidyun Singh and Sanjeev Ahluwalia, is something of a red letter day this weekend in Delhi. The Ahluwalias are a renowned clan of diplomats and bureaucrats. Sanjeev himself, is a distinguished IFS officer, with brother, the terribly posh Montek Singh, resigning as Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission in 2014. Vidyun herself is part of the dynamic team of Asha (Kochar) and Vidyun, fashion show organisers in India. Spotted amongst the elegant crowd in attendance were the likes of Sid Basu, Rohit Bal, JJ Vallaya and Rajesh Pratap Singh amongst others.

Rohit Bal, JJ Vallaya and Rajesh Pratap Singh

OverheardMany Indian tycoons glad they r in India where nothing can happn to thm regardless of how much thy ripoff— Tweeted by Rajeev Chandrasekhar in response to headlines about Iran billionaire tycoon Babak Zanjani sentenced to death for corruption.

Dangling ConversationsThe Oolong tea-favouring SoBo hostess was clucking away when we met her. But what we assumed to be her faulty dentures, were in fact tiny sounds of delight she was emitting. "When a person is down, one hates to knock them further of course," she said.

Of course, we said. "But this does not apply when they do not display an iota of remorse, a smidgen of regret at their willful and deplorable behavior" she said. We have to go soon, we reminded her. "What one is beginning to realize," she continued, with an irritated look, "is that it was, in fact, not a case of an industrialist who lived a life of runaway decadence, but a street hood, who used every trick in the book to pass off as an industrialist."

"Forget the banks and their largesse," she said. "Forget the tax payer’s money that’s been siphoned abroad to safe havens, forget the unpaid employees — some who killed themselves in despair; forget the fact that the resultant smear on business has resulted in collateral damage impacting the particular sector."

Forget the forget please, we said as we looked around to see if she’d been reading The Economist again.

"Apparently, thanks to his street smart survival skills, the beleaguered barrel is holding enormous leverage on the international company that bought him out. In the form of somehandy taped conversations," she said.

Taped conversations? We said sitting up so suddenly that the pooch sleeping at her feet awoke.

"Yes! Apparently they got a sweet deal by agreeing to overlook some epic higgledy piggledy in accounting so they could buy cheap," she explained.

"But little did they imagine that when the shit hit the fan as it has — there’s nowhere they can hide, because our friend taped conversations about this arrangement that would be extremely awkward if made public."

Woah!

"Yes," said the OTFSH pleased that her revelation had elicited such a response. "So now a large multinational’s reputation, not to mention that of a very senior international business head, is hanging from a tape." Watergate Redux? We said. "Water-mixed- with -spirits-gate redux!" said the OTFSH before tinkling her little bell and calling, "Boy zara hot water jaldi lao please!"